Blast You, Jack Frost!

I love "homegrown tomatoes," and it makes me sad to see my beautiful plants blackened, struck by Jack Frost, after the magnificent job they did during the past growing season. The onset of cold weather also put me in mind of the whereabouts of "Ann," the elderly homeless woman wandering through my neighborhood who picked two luciously ripe tomatoes out of my front yard a couple of months ago. She came back a week later. When I confronted her, she at first denied taking my tomatoes, and asked if she could sit and rest on my front steps. I told her she could and offered her a glass of water. (It was a very hot day, that.) When I came back with the water (and a fresh, local peach), she confessed that she had indeed taken the tomatoes, having given into temptation (who said Eve ate an apple?!) She then launched into a rapturous description of how much she had enjoyed them. One she had bitten into before she got halfway down the street, with the sweet juice running down her chin; the other she took to a friend's house and made into a tomato sandwich! I was so taken by our shared appreciation of tomatoes that we sat and talked for about a half-hour. She said her name was Ann, and she answered my questions about her experience of being homeless, and I answered hers about how I prepared the soil in the garden for the tomatoes. Before she left (and I gave her the tomato she had been eyeing in the first place) I asked that the next time she wanted a tomato from my garden, to ring the doorbell, and just ask. She smiled, gave me a hug, and said "It's a deal!" I left for vacation the next day, and when I got home, I still had loads of to matoes in the garden, but I haven't seen "Ann" since! Now the tomato plants are gone, too, and I'm wondering if Ann is staying warm, and whether I'd see her late evenings at the Bojangle's dumpster, since gleaning in the neighborhood is pretty sparse these days.